


Mismatch

by Sera_Clay



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:21:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3345098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_Clay/pseuds/Sera_Clay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzington, angst, romance. Usual disclaimers re: non-ownership apply.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mismatch

It's been so awkward between them.

She knows he just wants her to experience life as he does - expensive restaurants, fancy clothing, luxurious hotels.

Bottles of wine that cost more than her weekly food budget.

Raymond Reddington is old enough to be her father.

That's enough life experience to make her feel foolish, callow, unsophisticated.

The worst of it, she is. Life in a small town in Nebraska never prepared her for this type of life.

She's fine with a badge and a gun. The law on her side, and the criminals, no matter how powerful or wealthy, on the other.

Because she's in the right. Whether they know it or not.

With Red, no matter how generous or patient or understanding he is, Liz knows she can never catch up.

It began poorly and she's convinced it will end so much worse.

***

"Oh, come dance with me, Lizzie," he encourages her, giving Ressler a meaningful glance. "Two agents on the scene doesn't mean you both have to be sitting here, sipping soda water with lime."

Red reaches out his hand.

Liz sighs and lays her fake gem bedecked fingers in his grasp.

"My turn next," Ressler comments, lifting his glass towards Liz in a toast as Red begins towing her through the crowd towards the dance floor.

'Why, Donald, I thought you'd never ask!" Red laughs back over his shoulder at Ressler's scowl, with Lizzie giggling in tow.

It's a costume party. She's dressed like a flapper, long ropes of pearls tangling against the sheer tight layers of her period costume.

Identically dressed in period suits, Red looks elegant. Ressler looks uncomfortable.

Red holds her close, and then closer, as they dance.

Liz becomes uncomfortably aware that she discarded both her bra and her boy shorts to achieve the right effect in her costume.

When Red slides his hands from her upper back to the curve of her waist, then lightly down her thighs, she realizes he knows.

His eyes are blue or green or gray.

She's never seen them go smoky black with emotion. Not unless someone is about to die.

"Lizzie," he growls in her ear, pulls her tight against him, then whirls her away through the crowd. She loses sight of Ressler, their target, the live band enveloped in dry ice smoke on the low stage.

There's a long narrow hall, cheaply paneled in imitation walnut, leading to the restrooms. The back door at the end is chained shut, in violation of every fire code.

Red pushes her against the wall, meets her eyes, runs his hands up and down her body as if her dress was vanishing beneath his touch.

"What do you really want, Lizzie?" he whispers, his fingers sure beneath the short beaded skirt of the flapper dress. 

He's standing so close, one thigh pressed between her legs, the other stretched back, anchoring them both to the wall.

Liz moans. She can't help herself. It's been so long, and Red is so alive. Touching him is like touching fire, gazing into the shifting flames of destruction and rebirth.

Red strokes her as though he's never wanted anything more than this moment, her body splayed wantonly open for him, shaking on her vintage flapper heels.

She convulses on his fingers as the gunfire starts, Red holding her slammed against the wall until she finishes, hat tipped forward to hide his eyes.

"Now. The side door," he says harshly, and she tugs down her skirt before stumbling, then running after him through the screaming crowd.

Ressler eventually makes the collar, beams up from the back of the handcuffed blacklister.

"So where were you two?"

Liz spends the night at Red's safe house, yelling, shaking, finally surrendering.

He wants her. And it's far too late to deny that she wants him.

***

Red doesn't like to undress. He's edgy about being touched without warning, sleeps so lightly that most nights she resorts to the couch until he's fully asleep.

He seems to think she wants him to teach her, guide her, open certain doors for her. No matter how hard she tries to convince him that all she wants, all she wants to know about, is him. 

He's spent twenty years alone, on the run, and it shows.

Sometimes she catches him tapping his toe, elegantly shod as always in a custom-made Italian shoe, when she tried to finish her packing before they leave yet another safe house, yet again.

"We can buy more shampoo, Lizzie," he tells her, trying to project love and understanding. Maybe she's just imagining that he's really growing irritated with her, underneath. That his tenderness is the false patience of Tom Keen. Believing he really feels something for her, that anyone could, is something she struggles with. Repeatedly.

She only washed her hair once.

The almost full shampoo bottle stands lonely on the side of the tub. The maid will just dump it out, at most recycle the green plastic bottle. If the bottle is lucky.

It may just be headed for a landfill.

Liz stares around the bathroom.

None of these items, make-up, hair products, lotion, even the sheer blue silk robe forgotten on the hook on the back of the door, did anything wrong. Anything to deserve being discarded this way.

"Lizzie?"

Red is at the bathroom door, hat in hand. He lays one palm on her shoulder. His hand is warm, possessive. 

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart. But we need to go."

***

The FBI will never take her back, but the CIA is willing to make a deal. A package deal.

Red gets immunity, and so does Liz.

But they leave the United States, their citizenship, behind forever.

There are cover identities waiting. They can take their choice, once the blacklist is complete.

Red wants Rome or Buenos Aires. Liz wants somewhere small and rural and remote. She doesn't care which country, even which continent. She's always been good with languages.

Despite never having visited, Thailand sounds good. Liz loves Thai food. 

***

The last three blacklisters are the worst.

Each one takes them months. Liz loses weight, trains compulsively with new weapons. There's a deadly quality to Red that she can't sustain yet. He praises her, reminds her of the times she has saved him, saved their CIA team. She's not satisfied.

It's something in the quality of his attention, she thinks, sitting on the porch of their safe house in Colorado, a three story condo decorated in fake Native American artifacts that could easily sleep 12. 

It's just her and Red.

Everything Red does absorbs his complete attention. Even his rare blue moods, when he sinks into reverie, drinking heavily and smoking cigar after cigar, consume him completely. And yet somehow, in the background, his mind is always calculating, re-assessing.

Liz finds herself pulled in all directions these days. She sips her coffee and stares gloomily out at the stereotypically beautiful mountain scene.

The heavy snow of the night below has erased all traces of their arrival by Jeep, although in the distance she can see skiers through the pine trees, some of them very probably staying in this very condo complex. The buildings are cleverly angled so that her view includes a curving slice of the parking lot, but none of the other balconies.

"Are you skiing today?"

Red comes to the door behind her, but doesn't step out onto the porch. Liz shakes her head without turning around.

"No, you go ahead."

"I'll see you at lunch, then."

The door shuts behind him.

She's a competent skier. 

Red swoops through the black diamonds as easily as he does through a crowded ballroom.

Liz stares down glumly into her coffee. One more blacklister. Then she has to make a decision.

The door opens again. Heavy footfalls behind her. 

Red clomps to her side in his ski boots. Leans down as she turns her head, lifts her face for his kiss.

His lips linger.

"Oh, Lizzie." His voice goes husky with desire. "Do you want me put on some more coffee?"

She shakes her head, reaches up to caress the soft, silvery stubble at the back of his head. Opens her mouth for another long, delicious kiss.

"No, the snow is perfect this morning," she answers. "But maybe we can take a long lunch?"

He smiles happily down at her. The blacklister is scheduled to arrive the following day. Red is enthusiastically establishing his cover on the slopes.

"As long as you like," he promises her, the corners of his eyes crinkling as his smile widens. 

Oh, how she wants him. Again and again. Always.

Whatever else is wrong, in this at least, the desire that draws them together, they are equals.

***

The last blacklister is finally in custody.

Red is shaking hands with everyone, his latest fedora tipped rakishly over his eyes.

Liz cleans out her desk, setting all the CIA issued supplies in neat piles in the center of the desk, on the cheap vinyl blotter. She picks up an empty cardboard box in the printer room, carries it over to her desk, and then realizes she has no personal items worth carrying away into her new life.

Wherever it will be.

Liz sweeps everything she accumulated while working with the CIA into the trash - holiday cards, packets of tissue paper, a few colored markers she brought in to make doodling while on boring phone calls more appealing.

She's ready to go.

"We bought you a little something." Several of the women she's worked with, eaten lunch with, crowd into the doorway of her office. One of them holds out a brightly wrapped box.

"Oh, you shouldn't have," Liz exclaims, hoping they haven't noticed her tossing all their past greeting cards into the trash. 

Of course they have. They are CIA, after all.

But no one seems offended.

"Go ahead, open it."

Liz unties the bow, lifts off the lid of the flimsy folded clothing box a little gingerly.

She hopes it's not a prank. Even though she will probably never see any of these women again.

She lifts out the long, gauzy wrap with a sigh of appreciation. Hand-dyed, the loose cotton is a mesh of blue on blue patterns, perfect for a beach wrap or a hand-knotted skirt.

Liz hugs everyone, finally reaches Red at the chrome and steel of the elevator. An agent accompanies them downstairs, takes her badge without fanfare.

Red ushers her out, past the metal detectors and the guards, for the very last time.

"So, Lizzie? Where to, next?"

His voice is cheerful, but his eyes are worried.

They haven't talked about the future. Not with anything approaching what Liz could call success.

Separate identities come with the price of silence.

"Let's go."

He follows her without replying.

***

In the back of the limousine, Red stares at her inquiringly. Almost challenging her to speak first. He probably knows what she's going to say, what she wants to say.

When she remains silent, his expressive eyes go opaque. He gives the brim of his fedora a little stroke.

They will be at the airport in less than twenty minutes. The courier will be waiting with their choice of passports and tickets.

"I wish we could just check into a hotel room and stay in bed for a month," Liz finally blurts out. "Order room service, never go out or even get dressed."

She's tried to put together a list of things she wants, that she can't imagine Red giving her, and somehow she's started in the middle.

"For a month?" Red chuckles, shakes his head. "You're possibly the only person in the world who thinks being alone with me for a month would be anything less than hell."

"I think it would be heaven," returns Liz honestly. 

Why is he smiling like that? 

She's trying to tell him something he doesn't want to hear, so of course it's like screaming into a high wind. She stares out her window, trying not to cry.

"Oh Lizzie, you just reminded me of the time in my early twenties when I spent an entire month sailing alone in the Grenadines. I don't think I ever wore anything except a hat, except perhaps once or twice for trips ashore to resupply."

Red's eyes are liquid and dreamy. Liz looks over at him and she can see that slender youth, bearded and golden-skinned, as clearly as if he is sitting right beside her. So much younger and freer than she herself has ever been.

"Do you still love to sail?" she asks him cautiously.

Red blinks, his mouth firming into a troubled grimace.

"Of course I do."

"So you're going to buy a sailboat?"

Red gives her a frown. Tilts his head to one side.

"Lizzie?" His voice is very soft.

Oh. She said 'you.' Not 'we.'

"Or perhaps you already own one?" she goes on. She's not ready to have this conversation. The airport seems to approaching to meet them, time rushing past and through them. Just minutes now.

"Actually, I own three," says Red, reaching up and scratching his head. Disturbing the perfect angle of his fedora. Automatically she reaches over and adjusts it, gives him the little smile that means he looks perfect now. That means she loves how he looks. That she loves him.

Red reaches over and strokes the line of her jaw with his forefinger.

"Lizzie? Would you like to come sailing with me?"

His voice is so deep, so tender.

'What about the courier?" she asks him.

Red shrugs. 

"We'll pick up our passports, tell him thank you."

Liz leans a little closer, their shoulders touching.

"Just like that?" she asks him.

Red raises his brows at her.

"My plane is waiting. You don't think I intended us to fly commercial, did you?" 

Her lips tremble.

The limousine pulls up to the curb at the international terminal.

Liz has a purse. Red has what appears to be a camera bag. No other luggage.

"Sailing?"

Liz nods, trying not to sob. He's going to see her tickets when they meet the courier. He's going to know that she intended to leave him today.

"Then shall we?"

She grits her teeth and follows him into the crowd.

***

It's a warm night off the coast of Zanzibar. Impossibly bright stars glitter overhead, and the soft wind is faintly redolent of clove.

Liz leans back and stares up at the stars, savoring the warm bulk of Red beside her, the glowing tip of his cigar an orange counterpoint to the flicker of the yellow candle lighting the stairs down to the galley.

The sailboat rocks gently beneath them.

It's been almost a month. They do occasionally wear clothes, but not that often.

She still wants him as much as she did that first day at the costume party.

"We never talked about those tickets," Red says in an idle tone. Except she can feel his bare shoulder against her, the tremor that runs through him as he starts to speak.

Liz swallows hard. Her voice still comes out small. "I wish we could just stay here forever. Together."

Red stands, leans down and hands her his cigar. 

"I'll be right back," he says gruffly.

Liz takes a little taste of the cigar, rich and smoky, redolent of Red's mouth.

She loves sailing, the open expanse of the ocean, the way the waves rock them to sleep in each others arms.

Red is a different man out here, happily occupied with the many small tasks that sailing efficiently requires, but not constantly looking for the next opportunity, or on guard against some possible threat.

Red returns to sit beside her, papers rustling in his hands.

She sits up a little straighter. Here it comes.

At the airport, Red took their passports and tickets from the courier, and tucked them away into his bag without examining them. Ushered her onto the tarmac to his jet.

He flicks on his lighter, opens the first bundle of now-expired airline tickets.

"Thailand. You chose Thailand."

Liz nods. 

"Because crowds are difficult for you, now. Still."

She nods again.

Liz was able to convince the CIA that she recovered from the scene of carnage where the next to last blacklister tried to take a Sunday crowd, including more than fifty school children, hostage. She knows it wasn't her fault; the CIA deviated from their careful plan.

A small town on the coast of Thailand. She's even seen photos of the house. Approved the furnishings.

"Lizzie?"

Red shuffles the tickets, spreads his open before her. Raises the lighter a little higher.

Liz stares down at the printed ticket.

"You didn't say anything," she manages, finally.

Thailand. His ticket says Thailand, too.

"I needed to be sure it wasn't me you were leaving."

Liz shrugs. Red flicks off the lighter and they sit quietly in the darkness.

After a minute or two, she passes him back the cigar.

"You aren't one man, Red," she says finally. "There are so many variations of you."

He nods, reaches over, gives her thigh an affectionate squeeze.

"All of them love you, Lizzie. Never doubt that."

She leans her head on his shoulder. Sighs in complete contentment.

"I know. But I think I like Red the sailor the best."

He chuckles again.

"That's just because he doesn't wear much in the way of clothing."

Liz presses a kiss to his bare shoulder.

"Exactly."

The sailboat rocks softly at anchor, the stars above gleam, and all is well in their private world.


End file.
